Pages

09 August 2013

PlayBook: The Artist's Way

Julia Cameron has helped countless people tap into hidden
reservoirs of creativity and imagination. She labels her approach "a course in discovering
and recovering your creative self.” The results are astounding: the accountant
uncovers a hidden talent—a knack for fiction writing; the stay-at-home mom
launches a career in award-winning painting; the retired widow becomes a
proficient photographer.

Cameron’s book The
Artist’s Way provides us with the “cheat sheets” to her course. Especially
helpful are the concrete exercises she includes to get those creative juices
flowing.

Most of these exercises are easy and, in my opinion, all of
them are fun! For example, to coax courage out of your hidden artist, she
proposes an exercise called “Detective Work”. Without over-thinking your
response, she lists 20 phrases for you to complete by way of developing
awareness as to "why, when and where" your creative-self went into hiding. Here are a few of those phrases:

My favorite childhood
toy was…

I don’t do it much but
I enjoy…

If I could lighten up
a little, I’d let myself…

If it weren’t too
late, I’d…

My parents think
artists are…

My God thinks artists
are…

I love this book because of its practicality but I also love
it because of its vision. The grand underlying principle to this book is that
everyone, no matter how “left-brained” you think you are, has an artistic
impulse--a longing to create beauty with words, images and sounds. If this is
the case, it is a tragedy so many of us have repressed our artistic selves either due
to fear of societal judgment or acquiescence to excessive self-criticism. So, Cameron structures her
book around the idea of “recovery”. Each
chapter contains inspiration designed to help you recover an aspect that’s
crucial to let your artistic-self flourish.

For example, on week 7 participants of an Artist’s Way
course consider the topic “Recovering a Sense of Connection.” One of the
biggest hindrances to creativity is the problem of perfectionism. If you insist on perfection in whatever you
create, you will not create anything! It is better to start and move on from a
less-than-perfect "part 1" (without obsessing over those small, imperfect details) because the artist that
over-corrects along the way...never finishes. Here are a few gems from Ms.
Cameron herself:

“The perfectionist fixes one line of a poem over and over—until
no lines are right.”

“The perfectionist writes, paints, creates with one eye on her
audience. Instead of enjoying the process, the perfectionist is constantly
grading the results.”

“To the perfectionist, there is always room for improvement.
The perfectionist calls this humility. In reality, it is egotism. It is pride
that makes us want to write a perfect script, paint a perfect painting, perform
a perfect audition monologue.”

“Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit
of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever
be good enough—that we should try again. No. We should not.”

Spot on, Ms. Cameron, spot on!

If you don’t have this book and don’t plan on getting it,
let me mention one other gem from Ms. Cameron’s approach that can help anyone,
right now. Ms. Cameron insists everyone who’s committed to calling out their
inner artist to write something she calls “Morning Pages”.

In a chapter called "The Basic Tools", Ms. Cameron explains:

“Put simply, the morning pages are three pages of longhand
writing, strictly stream-of-consciousness…There is no wrong way to do morning
pages. These daily meanderings are not meant to be art…Nothing is too petty,
too silly, too stupid, or too weird to be included.”

Just write, whether you feel like it or not.

Once, a friend who was a golf pro said to me: “I can
guarantee any beginner that if they go to the driving range and hit two large buckets of
golf balls every day for a month they will take at least eighteen strokes off their
game, just like that.”

Contentment and commitment to do the simple, basic things do
more to help us grow than we may realize. In fact, Ms. Cameron insists this is
the single most important key to unlocking your creativity.

Give it a try! I can guarantee it will transform not only the
works of art you produce, but it will form something beautiful in you that,
quite honestly, transcends expression.

In my own way, I’ve been practicing a form of Morning Pages
since late summer 2009. Those who know me may already know what I’m talking
about: my daily prayers. The prayers I write each day began simply as responsive expressions to
thoughts and feelings that grew out of meditating on small sections of
Scripture. I had a ninety-nine cent
notebook and just began writing down these impressions, whatever came into my head and heart. After just a month of this, I saw I had filled a
good portion of that notebook. So, I decided to keep it up, one day at a time…

Four years later, I’m going on almost 1,500 unique, short prayers on Twitter--and many more that are not included there.
(I suppose that would be enough for a book.) What’s more, writing those prayers
has prompted other kinds of writing. Not all of it is publication-quality, but
at least it’s writing and it keeps me going, one day at a time.

That’s the key. One day at a time, small steps in which you suspend the inner critic and your fear of the outer critic.

While I don’t agree with all Ms. Cameron’s ideas in the book,
I do believe The Artist’s Way is a powerful tool to help us all live more
playfully. I recommend it especially if you have some other people to work through it with you.